Under the condition of the predictable shortage of the fossil fuel in the near future, looking for the substituted energies becomes an urgent issue. Among various substituted energies, the solar energy is the one with the best economy and environment protection. Therefore, several countries, such as USA and Germany, have included the solar energy as the national energy development project. However, the utilization rate of the solar energy is limited due to the conversion efficiency of the solar cell. There are two ways to raise the utilization rate. One is to raise the conversion efficiency of the solar cell, and the other is to reduce the production cost of the solar cell. Nevertheless, it is not easy to raise the conversion efficiency of the solar cell owing to the solid state properties of the semiconductor, but it is feasible to enlarge the exposure area of the solar cell.
The main manufacturing method of the thin film solar cell includes plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Since the size of the glass oft he buildings in the metropolis becomes larger, the manufacturing processes of the thin film solar cell for these glass substrates with large sizes have the trend toward the enlarged size and the continuous manufacturing. This trend meets the generation evolution of the substrate size of the thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD). Recently, the great progresses have been being made for the optoelectronic technologies, e.g. solar cells, TFT-LCD, etc., which necessitate the plasma apparatuses capable of performing the large area continuous manufacturing processes. Currently, the plasma apparatuses have the uniformity problem for the large-size plasma processes applied to TFT-LCD, thin film solar cells, etc.
In order to eliminate the above problem, the new technical solutions are proposed in the present invention by introducing the newly developed plasma hollow cathode discharge apparatus for the large area deposition processes for optoelectronic devices, e.g. solar cells. By stabilizing the pressure in the flow channels filled with the working gas, the plasma generated by the cathode discharge apparatus of the present invention has the properties of high uniformity and high dissociation to enhance the deposition rate. Accordingly, the present invention can solve the above mentioned problem, can greatly promote the manufacturing technologies, product performance, product quality and reliability of the optoelectronic apparatus, e.g. solar cells, can reduce the production cost at the same time, and finally make great contributions to the customers. The present invention is described below.